If you are investing your time and money on social media marketing efforts, you want to know if what you are doing is working and how it’s impacting your brand. Likewise, if someone else is spending their financial resources on you to manage their social media presence for them, they need proof that it’s worth it. So, would you measure your social media success by the number of likes a Facebook page receives? Or by the number of Retweets a Twitter post gets? If you’re unsure about what insights actually matter on social media, you are not alone. 88% of marketers also want to know how to measure the ROI from social media. So, we are going to share with you all the information you need to track your social media return on investment (ROI) and the tools available that make it all easier for you.

Without goals there is nothing to measure. Every month you must determine what it is that you or your client wants to accomplish through your social media campaign. What is important for your company at this time? Do you need more traffic driven to your website to generate leads or do you simply need more people entering in your latest contest? What is it that you want your followers to do after they read your content? Once you establish your goals, you will know what metrics need to be tracked and can begin to experiment with which tools can deliver that information to you.

What can you measure?

New followers/fans

Post reach

Interesting interactions and engagement

Site traffic

Lead generation

Sign-ups/conversions

Revenue increases

What tools can measure it for you? Facebook insights provides you with the information on things like how many page likes you have (the total and within the past few weeks), your post reach, and levels of engagement for each post. Using this information you can decide what time is the most beneficial to post to your fans as well as what type of post received the most attention. Additionally, if you received a lot of engagement from your promotion post and subsequently an increase in the amount of signups you received, you can probably attribute it to your social media efforts and not some freak accident. Utilizing tools like Google Analytics can reveal where most of your traffic is coming from whether it be Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you are an avid Twitter user, Social Bro tracks your interactions, measures the effectiveness of your campaigns, and provides you with audience insights. Likewise, Hootsuite enables you to analyze your brand growth, receive social demographics of your audience, and identify key community influencers.

What do you do with the information once you have it? Create weekly-monthly reports. The best tip we can give you is to create templates for these metric reports. Doing so will not only save you time, but will keep your reports looking consistent so that you can more easily compare figures. If you need an idea of where to start, Rachel Melia created a sample reporting template for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Blogs. Additionally, inputting your numbers into a report makes it easy to disseminate to your supervisor or client so that they can review the results and determine whether goals are being met. Similarly, your reports can be used to create your goals for the following month and highlight the areas you need to work on harder.

Remember: What works on social media isn’t static. This is what makes analyzing your ROI so important. You have to constantly review your weak spots and improve your strategy to overcome them and add value to your campaign.

Do you use a specific social media analytics tool that really works for you? Share your comments below, we love to hear from you!

With the ever-increasing technological world that we live in, you wouldn’t be surprised to find out that 74% of online adults use social networking sites. What you might not realize, however, is that only 55% of businesses are utilizing social media as a primary tool for their marketing strategy. Over the past year, this number has been on the rise and is projected to grow exponentially over the next few years as more and more businesses realize the benefits of social media.

What this means for you:

Social media is strengthening your competition by helping them actively engage the public you aim to serve. How this happens is that social media networks provide a voice to often faceless companies and help them build relationships with potential consumers, even your potential consumers. So, if you aren’t on social media, your clients and potential consumers ARE (and it is likely that so is your competition!). Therefore, it is essential for you to get on the social media bandwagon because it is no longer merely a tool that gives you a competitive edge, it is a societal expectation that your brand has a social media presence with which they can learn more about and engage with you.

Did you know?

Social media is found to be the top Internet activity participated in, even surpassing email. This means that the public is spending more and more time on social media. So, ask yourself, who are you marketing your services or products to? Members of the public! So, shouldn’t you be on social media, too? Additionally, out of the marketers that chose to utilize social media, 92% of marketers indicate that social media is important.

Here are a few reasons for you to consider on why social media is important:

Gives you the opportunity to learn about your audience. Who they are, what are their likes/dislikes, and what is it that they need from you.

Why a social media budget is absolutely necessary for your marketing plan:

While it might be tempting to forego the cost (and experience!) of social media professionals, it isn’t advised (and that’s not just because we offer this service). Actually, we offer this service because we have seen what happens when businesses choose to go it alone. Too often, companies are so motivated to get involved in social media that they join every network possible, subsequently spreading their time and resources too thin and resulting in dissatisfied, neglected followers that are hungry for information. Likewise, without the knowledge and advice of a seasoned social media marketer, you risk damaging your company’s credibility by posting too much, not posting enough, posting the wrong information, and even posting the right information but at the wrong time or on the wrong network (there are just SO many factors). But even companies who choose to handle their own social media accounts can no longer afford to do it for free. Social media networks are cashing in on the findings that businesses are using their services, and getting results! In order to stay relevant in the competition and get your information seen (and shared), you have to utilize paid Facebook advertisements, Promoted Pins on Pinterest, and Twitter’s mobile targeting. Thus, companies thinking that they don’t have time, energy, or financial resources to expend on a solid social media strategy is quickly becoming a thing of the past. So much so that social media marketing budgets will actually double over the next five years.

Why social media is (most likely) for you:

Even after you have considered all of the information and data that reveals just how powerful social media marketing is for your business, you might still be unsure of whether or not it is right for you. Honestly, social media isn’t the most effective marketing option for every single business, but it is for most! When making your decision, it is important to realize that social media will not be the answer to all of your business woes. Likewise, you cannot just merely sign up for a social media account and expect followers to come to you without putting work into building relationships. You have to educate yourself on the best tactics, keep up with the latest trends, create, promote, and share quality content every single day, and spend time getting to genuinely know your followers. In short, social media is not a magical elixir, but it is a remarkable tool that is currently unrivaled for reaching and engaging your audience in a whole new way. As previously stated, 55% of businesses are currently using social media networking to their advantage by making connections and getting their name more visible. The question is, why aren’t you doing something to ensure that your company isn’t forgotten in the meantime?

Do you have any comments or questions about social media? Share them below, we’d love to hear from you!